Birthplace of James Madison and Southern Plantation

Tag Archives: Historic

On the night of July 3, 2014, the day before our Red, White and Blues concert with the Alexis P Suter Band, we experienced a very high wind strong. It blew limbs down and made quite a lot of noise that night. But the worst part of this storm was that it brought down our back portico lantern. Just so you know, the door you enter when you arrive at the plantation is our back portico. Lucky for us, it didn’t hit anyone.

When it came down, the copper structure was damage and needed to be reattached. Believe it or not, it is next to impossible to find someone to do it. After looking locally, we finally found someone in Gordonsville, Virginia that could do it. Laurie Holladay Interiors (http://www.laurieholladayinteriors.com/) had someone on site to do the repair. We just had to get this huge lantern to them.

So on Monday, March 16, 2015, on our way to Montpelier for the Wreath Laying Ceremony for James Madison’s birthday, we made a side stop to drop it off. When I arrived, the gentleman who was going to do the repairs asked me how old I thought it was. Not knowing when it was brought to Belle Grove, my best guess is that it came sometime during the Hooker Family period (1930-1987) My best guess was somewhere in the 1940s. Brett would receive a call later the next day letting him know that they could repair it, the cost and when to expect it. He also let Brett know that the age of the lantern wasn’t the 1940s. He said that this lantern started out as a gas lantern around 1900. It would have later been converted to the electric as so many other would have.

Within one week, I was on the way back to pick it up. I was so excited to get it back. First to know that it came in during the Thornton Family period (1894-1906) instead of the Hooker Family. What a great surprise that was! Second to finally get light back on the back portico. It truly gets so dark here and I have been so afraid of people tripping down the stairs because they couldn’t see them.

Today, it was finally reinstalled! What a great joy to turn on the lantern and see the light! Tonight is going to be such a great joy seeing our lantern back again!

This weekend, Brett will have another item added to his “to do” list. We are going to chain the corners to keep it from swinging back and forth in the winds here. In fact we are going to chain all of the portico lights. We need to protect these treasures for others to enjoy.